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Theo de Raadt Discusses OpenBSD and Beyond
emil writes to tell us that NewsForge (Slashdot Sister Site) is running an interview with OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt. In the interview Theo explores the upcoming release of OpenBSD 3.9, continuing financial difficulties, and some of the tension between the OpenBSD team and other businesses that some feel are taking advantage of the free software without giving anything back. In related news the Jem Report has an interesting writeup that expounds on widespread difficulties that could be faced if the OpenBSD project continues its downward spiral because of their parallel development of OpenSSH.
He accuses Linux developers of having "much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have", but then goes on to make an exception to their core belief regarding Full Disclosure for Sun, because they pissed him off.
They don't call him Theo The Rat just because it's an obvious pun.
No, BSD is a Unix hybrid much like Linux is. BSD started life out as SYS V and then many people feel they messed it up. Some say they greatly improved it. The point is, it has moved far enough I don't consider it to be Unix anymore. Certainly Open BSD, that isn't Unix by definition. That is the FREE things Berkeley did and they rewrote all the stuff that USL owned. I remember it, 43 3.5" disks as I recall. Linux took SYSV standards, BSD, merged them intellegently. That is why it is very popular. I remember the 1980s when we had the SYS V - BSD wars. It was sort of like getting avid war demonstrators and avid anti-war demonstrators in the same room. The BSD project brought us a lot of good things - like Sockets, IPC and other things. It is just the base OS, where they put things were.... well different. People didn't want to look all over tim-buk-too to find a freaking config or binary file. Used to drive me crazy. People picked one - SYS V and called it a day. The unfortunate thing is I see this BS starting up all over again with Linux. Stuff in different places. Wars over distros - Suse/RedHat/(other).
My advice to the BSD crowd was to simply admit they are beating a dead horse and migrate to Linux like the rest of us did over a decade ago. There is no shame in it. We have a bigger sandbox, more toys and more people to play with. Their sandbox is old, has scat in it and nobody wants to play over there any more. Bring their toys over and enjoy. Otherwise they face having their sandbox taken away from them entirely. Bankruptcy.
The security issue is funny too. I remember them saying in 1999 that they were so secure, couldn't be broken into because of their code reviews and such. I said they were delusional. They said I was crazy. The next three months the exploits for Linux were ported to BSD. So much for code review and "security".
The unfortunate part is I think it will get ugly from here. Some very good researchers and coders may decide to simply stop coding all together.